Insecurity is emerging as the great electoral battle between the ruling party and the opposition in Mexico

Xóchitl Gálvez, presidential candidate of the opposition coalition formed by the PAN, PRI and PRD, began her campaign last Friday with a rally in Fresnillo, Zacatecas.

The act was loaded with symbolism, since Fresnillo is the most unsafe city in Mexico, according to a study by INEGI, and the State of Zacatecas is governed by Morena, the ruling party.

There, Gálvez said that one of her government's goals is to build “a very high-security prison with cutting-edge technology so that criminals are afraid of falling in there.”

The media began to talk about a “megaprison,” and analysts compared it to the anti-terrorism prison built by the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, the fearsome Cecot.

The standard bearer of the ruling party, Claudia Sheinbaum, responded with a visit to Guanajuato, a state historically governed by the PAN and one with the highest records of murders.

There Sheinbaum criticized the Gálvez prison proposal: “They propose megaprisons for young people;

“We propose universities and public education, attention to the causes,” she said.

Insecurity has become the first major issue of the presidential campaign, one of whose causes no one seems to take charge of.

It is the fault of the government that is about to conclude, that of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, they say from the opposition.

It is the fault of the governments from further back, those of the PRI and the PAN, the ruling party alleges.

The president of Mexico fully entered the campaign this Wednesday, despite the restrictions imposed by the electoral authorities, and criticized that insecurity has become an electoral flag.

“It is evident that they are using violence, magnifying, making what happens bigger, for political or political purposes, for this season, for the campaign,” he said in his daily conference.

While López Obrador accused the "politicking" of insecurity from the National Palace, outside the official residence a group of normalistas from Ayotzinapa prepared a spectacular demonstration against their Government, in protest of the obstacles in the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students long ago. almost 10 years.

The families of the disappeared have criticized the Army's refusal to open hundreds of Intelligence files, crucial to knowing the truth about the case.

The claims are a direct questioning of the president's opening speech, and a practical representation of the open wound caused by the high number of murders and disappearances in Mexico.

The daily average at the end of last year was more than 80 homicides a day, a slight decrease.

Despite everything, this six-year term will end as the most violent in the country's recent history.

Sheinbaum, poised to succeed López Obrador, declared hours later: “What happened today does not seem to me to be correct [...] National Palace has opened the doors, particularly for the fathers and mothers of Ayotzinapa;

"The President of the Republic has received them on various occasions."

The presidential candidate suggested that it was a provocation that could have culminated in a confrontation.

Protesters destroy a door of the National Palace in protest of the Ayotzinapa case, on March 6.Stringer (REUTERS)

The relatives of the victims have set up a sit-in in the capital's Zócalo, a few steps from the National Palace, demanding a personal dialogue with López Obrador, without intermediaries.

Not even that demand was attended to by the Government.

The sit-in remained in Mexico's main square even at the start of Sheinbaum's campaign, confronting the celebratory spirit of the ruling party.

The normalistas reached a limit, and this Wednesday, in the protest outside the Palace, they took an official vehicle and used it to break down a door to the official premises.

They tried to cross, but were stopped with tear gas and shields.

Politics became politics.

The greatest fear of Mexicans

That insecurity has become the first issue in the electoral brawl is very much a condensation of reality.

The latest Enkoll survey for EL PAÍS showed that 53% of Mexican voters consider insecurity to be the country's main problem, that is, the biggest pending problem, the issue that presidential candidates must most urgently address.

For voters, then there is the problem of corruption (32% mentioned it) and then the economy (15%).

All of them are pressing issues, some more abstract than others, but the citizens have made it clear that living in peace;

to have the certainty of being able to walk its streets, that they will arrive safely wherever they go, that their loved ones will be well;

that what cost them so much, they will continue to have, is the most important thing in Mexican democracy.

The problem is such, and the candidates understand it that way, that they have started the battle for the presidency with the offer of remedies.

In the heat of the debate, given the urgency and size of the monster, some proposals have bordered on spectacular.

Gálvez has been harshly questioned about the idea of ​​the large prison, and has already had to clarify that she does not think about massive raids against alleged criminals, unlike what Bukele has done in El Salvador against the gangs, in a policy of harsh hand that has filled the prisons with thousands of people, many of them innocent, in just a few months.

“We are going to build a special prison for the worst criminals.

Enough of prisons being the place where extortion takes place, where people have privileges, where criminals are not afraid to come, because they live almost the same as if they were on the street,” she said.

And she has specified: "We are not talking about sending young people that we find painting walls", but rather "those criminals like the one who raped and murdered a girl."

Gálvez has insisted that he will put an end to López Obrador's policy of having the National Guard and the Army limit themselves as much as possible to patrolling the streets and avoiding confrontations with crime — summarized in the slogan “hugs, not bullets.” —, which, however, has not prevented the massacres.

“You don't even have to send the Army to shoot criminals, you have to apply the law and that doesn't mean shooting them, it doesn't mean killing them.

"I don't know why they think that applying the law means extermination," said the opposition candidate.

Gálvez, however, has been forced to distance herself from former President Felipe Calderón, of the PAN, and his strategy of direct confrontation with the drug cartels, the root of the so-called

war on drugs

, to which the overwhelming figures of violent deaths and disappearances (the latter stood at 113,000 until last December).

A National Guard agent guards the site where the body of a woman was abandoned, in Tijuana, on December 26. Omar Martínez Noyola (Cuartoscuro)

“Look at the difference between the strategy.

In one case, the war against drugs is proposed;

"We propose, not war, but the construction of peace," contrasted Sheinbaum, who has followed López Obrador's line of attributing the problem of violence to social causes, to the neoliberal model, to the breakdown of the social fabric.

The candidate has proposed reinforcing social programs for young people, opening more universities and creating more sources of employment.

She has also proposed giving the National Guard its own investigative powers, and coordinating with the prosecutor's offices and the State Police.

The local bodies, in turn, would increase their number of troops, their weapons and their reaction capabilities, according to her plan.

The strategy involves reforming the Judiciary, so that there are more controls over the actions of judges.

Sheinbaum had been reserved about López Obrador's plan for the National Guard — a civilian institution — to be in the hands of the Army.

Until this Monday, when, in a press conference, the candidate said that she will seek the consolidation of that security body under the control of the Ministry of Defense.

The opposition standard bearer has offered to send the military to their barracks, gradually, with a view to converting the National Guard into a completely civilian corporation, and removing from the Armed Forces the powers of business and project administration that the Government gave them. of López Obrador.

She has also proposed opening a National University for Security, in order to train certified elements, and create an immediate reaction team in each State to act against the cartels.

The dance of campaign proposals and promises has begun, like every election year.

The two leading candidates are trying to make a difference on the most worrying issue for Mexicans.

The recipes tested so far have not managed to get the country out of the bloody stage of the war, almost two decades after its start.

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